Staff: three full-time plus 50 professional actors called on for particular events

Turnover: £130,000

Business idol: “Arsenal Football Club. I have a real respect for how they have been able to compete with the millions thrown at the game by foreign investors. It shows what you can do with young hungry talent”

A man is chasing a girl in a shiny pink sash across Waterloo Bridge, screaming “thief” at her disappearing back. He is claiming she stole the black bag in her hand from a dancer on the roof of the National Theatre. But she keeps on running.

Luckily, there are no police around as the girl is no thief but a bride-to-be on her hen night. And the slightly sweaty man trying to catch up with her is an actor, one of four dotted around London as part of a personalised, interactive treasure hunt.

With not a willy hairband in sight, it may not sound like usual hen activity. But it is an increasingly popular one, which is good news for London Quest, the interactive-experience company that entrepreneurs Andrew Pawlby and Tim Morgan set up in 2006.

Pawlby, 31, started his working life as a community football coach at Charlton Athletic, with a second job in a bar to save up for a mortgage. “But when I realised I was never going to be the next Thierry Henry, I thought about my first love — drama — and whether I could make a career of it,” he says.

The inspiration for Quest came from his childhood. “My dad used to invent stories for me and my two sisters’ birthday parties when we were growing up,” he says. “We would be sent on secret missions based on whatever we were interested in at the time — a tailor-made treasure hunt.” Pawlby had no business experience but thought others might enjoy the missions he’d loved as a kid, so he joined up with his bartender colleague Morgan — who had just left drama school — to create a Quest adventure for a friend’s birthday.

“[The friend] was a currency trader, so the mystery was based on a Sherlock Holmes-style investigation into dodgy banks,” Pawlby says. “Everyone was told to turn up outside the Polish embassy at 1pm, and found clues on boats in the Serpentine. By the end, we realised people had had such a good time the business could be a runner.”

The duo began promoting their business via trade fairs but the phone really started ringing after they ran a Quest for a Time Out journalist.

“She was into Thirties music, so we designed a hunt based around an inheritance, with the group finding clues on postcards in a Thirties shop and in a graveyard,” Pawlby says. “She loved it and wrote up a double-page glowing review in Time Out.” They became very busy but, at the start, with each Quest taking a fortnight to devise, even the £60-a-head fee (for a minimum of 15 participants) wasn’t enough. After two years, with revenues hovering around £40,000, the entrepreneurs decided to branch out. “We began working with corporates,” Pawlby explains. “People had a great time on the weekend and then went into work on Monday morning and told their colleagues.”

McKinsey, BlackRock, Freshfields and Deloitte have all signed up.

But not every Quest activity has gone according to plan. “We sent one party to a Brick Lane bagel house,” says Pawlby. “We’d arranged that the bakery would temporarily employ our actor — Ali — so he could give the first clue. But the girls got the address wrong and went to the bagel place next door.

“Fortunately, this place also had an employee called Ali and he was so taken by the girls he gave them a full-on bagel-baking session. After half an hour, convinced our Questers were lost, we searched the area and found our ladies caked in flour, having the time of their lives — they presumed it was all part of the Quest. We didn’t shatter their illusions.”

Another time, a member of the public overheard one of Quest’s actors delivering his lines to a group along the Embankment. “She was so convinced by the despair in his voice she called the police, fearing an impending suicide,” says Pawlby. “Next thing, there was a police helicopter, two police cars, and a coastguard boat. They saw the funny side — kind of!”

At the Olympics, Quest won a contract from Coca-Cola for 300 actors to work in the Olympic Park, where they approached any bored-looking spectators and broke into skits of events such as Mo Farah’s 10,000-metre win.

The duo want to build on their Olympic experience but they intend to continue their personalised Quests too. “We started Quest with no investment, working second jobs to build up a slush fund,” says Pawlby. “This year, we’re looking forward to getting more people involved and spreading Quest’s wings.”